


Out in the Woods

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Monsters, Not at all frightening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15786033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: She was the reason that the house had a reputation, that no one stayed there for very long, but it wasn't her fault. She was just lonely and wanted to make friends. Having learned from her mistakes she's confident that this time will be different, she won't frighten the newest owner off.





	Out in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneEntireBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneEntireBee/gifts).



She had watched the man carefully for over a year, ever since he moved into the little house at the end of the long dirt road. She expected that, like the others, he would become unnerved by isolation and the sounds and shadows moving in the dark at night. All the others had and she missed them.

Especially the young couple with their little son. The boy had not been afraid of her and they had become friends. He had taught her many things about people. Unfortunately his parents became unnerved with his stories of her and the drawings he showed them troubled them. When the father finally caught a glimpse of her that night, during the thunderstorm that had been the end of it. They left the next morning and the house was up for sale again by the end of the week.

It hurt her so because the boy had told her that he was afraid of storms and she had only been looking in the window to see if he was alright.

It was so lonely in the woods, none of her kind remained, if there had been any to begin with. It had been so long that she wasn’t sure anymore and the people were her only company.

So she vowed that she would be more careful with the man, even if it meant simply observing him from afar.

He didn’t have a car, converting the garage to a carefully maintained workshop where he carved lovely sculptures out of wood, some abstract, some fantastical representations of animals, people and things that she could not recognize. She watched him for hours, the process of him working was as fascinating as the art he created. Every tool had a place it was kept in, and was immediately returned to that place when he was done. None of the previous people had been so orderly.

When he needed to go anywhere a car or van would come to pick him up.

As she grew more confident she crept across his yard one night and dug out a shallow den under the front porch, taking care to make sure that the entrance was hidden by bushes.

From under the porch she learned that the people driving him were not all friends, though he had many of those. He was not lonely, and found the isolation and the woods inspiring rather than frightening. Since he didn’t own a car of his own he had to call a taxi service for rides when a friend couldn’t get him.

She couldn’t risk spending too much time under the porch though, not when delivery vans came regularly and picked up or dropped off packages at the house.

Once she was careless and one of them noticed a tuft of her hair caught in the bushes. The deliveryman warned that there might be something living under the house, but the man laughed it off, saying that he would have noticed if an animal actually lived there.

After that she was more cautious about going under the porch and tried not to spend so much time there.

Watching from countless hiding spots near his house she learned his routine, how every day when the weather was good he would go for a walk in the morning and again at night. The same time every day, summer and winter. It was interesting that he didn’t change his routine when the days grew short, as in her experience most people were afraid of the dark. He was different though, even though he didn’t carry a light he moved as surely as she did, even on the darkest of nights.

That was good though, if he was that fearless perhaps she wouldn’t frighten him off if she was careful to watch from a distance.

So watch she did.

Winter proved frustrating, for he worked with the garage door closed. She could hear him, but was only able to see him on his walks, which he skipped when there was too much snow.

In the spring she watched him open the garage door for the first time in months and carefully clean his workshop, sweeping the floor, examining every tool and taking inventory of which needed to be replaced and discarding wood that he’d determined wasn’t fit for carving.

It was something she’d seen with previous people who had stayed in the house long enough, spring was a time when people got restless and started cleaning. It was an instinctive, universal thing, even she cleared old leaves and branches out of her dens, lining them with sweet smelling grass when it grew.

She watched as he took one of his favorite chisels, considering if it was too worn to keep when his phone rang.

He hurried into the house, leaving the chisel on his work bench rather than hanging it back with the others he was keeping or putting it into the box of ones he was getting rid of.

The call must have been an important one, or perhaps he’d decided that he’d had enough cleaning for the day, since he remained in the house until his night walk and simply closed the garage door.

The misplaced tool was fascinating to her, because it was the first time he hadn’t returned something to its proper place.

In the morning she witnessed something remarkable, something that made things she’d seen without thinking about make so much sense.

After his morning walk he opened the garage door and went over to where he kept his tools and reached for where his favorite chisel would have been, even though it was still sitting on the work bench where he’d left it the previous day.

Swearing to himself he checked every hook and peg where he kept his tools, went through the box of ones he’d discarded and then finally started sweeping his hands over the tables and benches.

It was amazing to watch, for it explained why he walked so surely in the dark.

Even in the light he couldn’t see, so day and night were the same to him.

Practically shaking with anticipation, she watched until he found the chisel and sat down to work.

She was barely able to focus on what he was doing. What she’d seen had left her with so much to think about.

The next day she made up her mind, instead of following him at a distance when he went for his walk, she waited in the woods until he came back and watched as he went inside.

She emerged from the trees, walked down the path to his porch and, rearing up to her full height, knocked on the door.

Listening to his approaching footsteps she waited nervously.

He opened the door and greeted her with a smile, not at all afraid of her.

“Hi,” she couldn’t smile back, her face didn’t work that way, but she would have if she could.

\---

His friend came by to visit practically daily, talking to him about things she’d seen in the woods, asking him about his work and offering to help in small ways around the house. Her help wasn’t necessary, but he tolerated it because the way she offered wasn’t patronizing and it gave him the chance to listen to her as she moved around the house.

From the start, when she’d first come by and knocked on his door to compliment his work and introduce herself as a neighbor, he’d known that there was something strange about her. Her voice, shrill and raspy, had come from just below chest height, but the way she breathed indicated something much larger. The pattern to her footsteps wasn’t that of a person either. She moved with a short, mincing gait more like that of the foxes he sometimes heard in the woods. It wasn’t a perfect match though, she had too many legs, at least three sets that she walked on and a fourth set of limbs that worked like arms. The sound of her walking was something he’d heard many times before when he went for his daily walks. Then she’d kept her distance, staying just out of hearing range. Getting to meet her up close had been a surprise, but he’d been curious.

They’d talked for a while and he’d ended up giving her a tour of his studio because she’d been genuinely interested in his work. Unlike how things usually went when people learned about his hobby, her questions weren’t about why he did it or how he managed to, though she did ask why and how for very different reasons. It seemed that the idea of creating art was strange to her and from her questions about how he made his carvings he got the impression that her hands didn’t work like his.

When, several visits later, he invited her into the house, he was able to learn more about her by listening, because at no point did she offer to explain what she was.

Her feet were tipped with either hooves or claws that clicked against the wood floor and her hands were similar. When she washed dishes, like she’d done for him that morning, claws scraped against the glassware.

Once, when she was away and a friend was visiting, he’d had them look around his porch to find her hiding spot, because he knew that there were times she slept there. Sure enough, hidden so well that his friend nearly missed it despite its size, there was a depression worn in the dirt, leading beneath the porch. Whatever was living under there, his friend had told him, had to be big, the size of a large dog at least.

That sounded about right, though listening to her walk by, it was obvious that she was proportionally longer than a dog her size would have been.

His friend mentioned tracks that he couldn’t make sense of, a series of scrape marks and a few hairs, coarse, bristly things like lengths of wire. He’d picked up a few of the hairs and felt them and they weren’t like those of any animal he’d encountered.

He made no mention of it to her, though he did offer to let her stay with him any time she wanted. He’d nearly told her she could stay in with him when it rained, but she’d lived in the woods for long enough that he was sure that there was some place where she could keep out of the elements.

Her presence explained the reputation that the house had, that he’d been warned of stray dogs, crazy former owners and even ghosts.

He had no idea what she was, but he figured that she’d offer some explanation when she was ready. Until then he’d let her think that he didn’t notice anything unusual about her.

Confronting her about what she was wasn’t worth risking a friendship over.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something that was kind of cute for this prompt because at its heart it's a pretty adorable idea.


End file.
